Amman

The capital of Jordan, and where Harry starts a spontaneous trip with Mac — a country he says he knew very little about, on his first proper visit to the Middle East. (He counts Dubai and then says it doesn’t really count.)

His first impressions are almost uniformly good, and the thing he keeps returning to is how friendly people are — he says on camera that he isn’t just saying it. Food, weather and atmosphere all get the same verdict, and he can’t find much to put on the other side.

Getting in from the airport

He ends up in an unlicensed taxi by accident, and only finds out mid-journey. The driver explains that he is operating illegally but can’t be caught because he holds a booking document — and then, part-way into the city, swaps Harry into a different taxi to get past a police checkpoint. Harry treats it as part of the experience rather than an incident.

Worth knowing rather than repeating: unlicensed drivers work the airport run, the switch is how they handle enforcement, and nothing came of it.

The same driver’s summary of his own country: Jordan is safe and the people are kind — the first of many times Harry is told this.

What he sees

• A Roman theatre sunk into the middle of the modern city, high-rises on all sides. He rates the contrast highly and recommends it without naming it on camera. Entry is covered by the Jordan Pass.
• Licensed local guides work the site, offering tours at the entrance. Harry declines politely and is left alone.

The city itself

• It is very hilly, which Harry treats as a fitness programme — a lot of climbing between districts on foot.
• Streets are decorated individually, each with its own thing strung overhead: flowers on one, buckets on another.
• The souk is organised by trade. Whole areas given over to one thing — guns in one, pets in another — which he says he has seen in few other places.
• Crossing the road is a skill and gets its own demonstration: you simply walk out. He notes it is usually harder than it looked that time.

The citadel

A hilltop site in the middle of the city with panoramic views the whole way around — the whole of Amman visible from it, and worth timing for sunset. The ruins are dated in the video to 160 AD (from video – unverified).

Guides are available at the entrance for 30 JOD (from video – unverified). Harry and Mac decline on price and then immediately regret it — he tells the camera he wishes he could explain the history and can’t, and Mac says outright they should have taken the guide. See travel with a local guide.

The call to prayer from up here is the thing he rates highest in Amman. It comes from mosques all over the city at once and echoes off the buildings, so the same call arrives several times over. Between calls he notes how quiet it is: the traffic is far enough below to be inaudible.

Food

• Manakish with za’atar — flatbread baked with the herb-and-sesame mix, which Mac introduces as his favourite food in the world and describes as the Lebanese way of doing it. Harry compares it to garlic bread, has never had anything like it, and is immediately sold.
• Turkish coffee, taken with sugar. He is honest that it isn’t for him but that it did the job after a nine-hour flight.
• A baked bread dish with stringy cheese, cooked and brought to the table still steaming, which Harry rates 9 out of 10 against manakish’s 10. Neither he nor Mac gets its name on camera, so it isn’t named here.
• A full restaurant lunch for two — two large mains, sides and drinks — came to about 32 JOD, which he puts at roughly £32 or $35 (from video – unverified). He calls it good value for the quality of the place.

Shopping for the trip

The old market is about ten minutes’ walk from the centre, and the reason they go is practical: Amman gets genuinely cold in the evenings, and the desert later in the trip will be colder. Neither of them had brought a jacket.

• A jacket: asked 25 JOD, bought at 20 (from video – unverified). Harry had 15 in mind and says so; the seller comes down in stages.
• Mac’s jacket: 16 JOD — and the moment worth recording is that Harry mis-hears it as 60, hands over a 50, and the seller gives the change back rather than taking it.
• Thobes, tried on for comedy and bought.

The sales technique, named out loud while it is running. The seller won’t give a price until the jacket is on, and Mac says exactly what is happening: once you have it on and like it, you are no longer deciding whether to buy. They buy anyway, at a price Harry is happy with — which is the useful version of the gift that isn’t free: seeing the move doesn’t mean refusing it, it means knowing what you’re in.

Coming back to it

Harry returns to Amman at the end of the trip, after Petra, Wadi Rum and Aqaba, and it is where the cluster’s verdict lands: one of his favourite cities in the world, and Aqaba his least favourite in the country.

• It feels safe to walk, at any hour. His words: you never really feel in danger, even down a properly dark street, and he says that is not something he gets in a lot of countries. He is careful to flag that this might be his own ignorance rather than a fact.
• It is convenient in a way he doesn’t expect — good wi-fi in cafés especially, which he and Mac use to work a full day.
• A modern business district with skyscrapers, an international mall and Western chains, which he says feels like a Western mall. Masks were required there and largely not worn.
• Driving in the city is genuinely hard — Harry hits a kerb on his first morning at the wheel.

Costs on the second stay

• An Airbnb about $28 per person per night (from video – unverified), spacious, with a kitchen and city views, about ten minutes’ drive or twenty minutes’ walk from the centre.
• Taxis are very cheap — an Uber into the centre around 2 JOD, roughly $2.50 (from video – unverified).
• A restaurant meal in the upmarket business district: 13 JOD, about £15–16 (from video – unverified). Chicken under melted cheese, the ubiquitous white sauce, peppers and tomatoes, and a great deal of bread. Harry rates it highly and points out he could have walked ten minutes and paid less — the cheap and expensive versions of the city are close together.

On following strangers’ advice

At the central market they are approached by a man selling something who recommends somewhere to go, and they simply take his advice rather than keep looking. Harry offers it as the country in miniature: a stranger with something to sell who is friendly first, and whose recommendation turns out to be worth having.

Barbers

The best-documented single service in the cluster, and Harry rates it as one of the best haircuts he has had anywhere.

• 20 JOD for about an hour (from video – unverified) — which he is careful to say is not cheap, and is the same as he pays in the UK.
• What that hour contains: jackets taken at the door, tea and coffee brought over, music, a cut from a barber of thirty years’ experience, a beard trim, a full straight-razor shave — which he is told gives a better and longer-lasting result than a blade — then hot face and nose waxing and a head massage from a second man of ten years.
• The waxing stings without being properly painful, and is described to him as being for the skin rather than only the hair.
• Hours are 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and Harry contrasts that work rate directly with British opening hours.
• Friday is the holy day in Jordan, and he assumed the shop would be shut. It wasn’t.

His summary is about the hospitality rather than the haircut: in England, he says, they tell you to sit down and be quiet.

Obs: the shop is not named here. Its location is published in the video description and Harry recommends it on camera, which is what the bundle’s naming rule turns on.

Practical facts

• The Jordan Pass, which he recommends in his first ten minutes in the country: it includes the visa as well as entry to a long list of sites. He puts it at around £100 and says on camera he isn’t sure and will correct it on screen (from video – unverified). See get the Jordan Pass.
• A hostel is where he stays on the first night.
• About a nine-hour journey from the UK.

Harry’s tips

• Buy the Jordan Pass before you fly — the visa is inside it.
• Try manakish immediately. It is the first thing he eats and the first thing he recommends.
• Expect to be offered a guide at the sites, and expect one refusal to be enough.
• Take the guide at the citadel. Thirty dinars felt like too much at the time and they both said within minutes that they should have paid it.
• Bring a jacket. The evenings are cold and the desert is colder — this caught both of them out.
• Don’t put it on until you’ve asked the price.

Source videos

• BRITISH TOURIST travels to AMMAN, JORDAN 🇯🇴 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9oolIwfonk
• $20 Fake Jacket in AMMAN, JORDAN 🇯🇴 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLXimUxNIVM
• Secret tour guide in JERASH, JORDAN🇯🇴 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYzfrPancvA — Jerash as a day trip from the capital
• Trying DELICIOUS Jordanian food🇯🇴 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTR00Vxmr6s — the second stay, and the verdict
• The Best Haircut In JORDAN🇯🇴 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0E8VdvRg4s